X-Message-Number: 30130
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: Re: golden futures
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:19:51 -0800
In Cryonet #30126, Mr. Ettinger writes:
>(1) most people don't want radical change, even if it is positive, and (2) the
prospective customer still needs to see it as plausible, and despite the
popularity of science fiction, most people still see it as fiction.
Science fiction might have had some relationship with plausible futures 50-60
years ago. But that relationship has broken down in the world of the real,
rather banal 21st Century that in many ways still looks like the world of the
1970's. I've pointed out here and elswhere that science fiction writers'
spiritual cousins, the "futurists," predicted 30 years ago that we'd have
radical life extension, solar power satellites, space colonies and other neat
stuff by now (the 2000-2010 decade). Instead their current successors, the
transhumanists and singularitarians, have rescheduled these marvels to the mid
or latter 21st Century.
When does that "golden future" arrive, again?
"There was a time before reason and science when my ancestors believed in all
manner of nonsense." (Narim on "Stargate SG-1")
Mark Plus
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